


A Wood out of Time

by lirin



Category: Captain America (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 09:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8244239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: There’s more than one way to enter the Wood between the Worlds.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



Everywhere around Edmund, there was water. Scrambling to the surface, he realized he was in a small pond. Edmund heaved himself up onto the grass at the pool’s edge. Peter was there, staring at the trees around them. “What is this place?” Peter murmured. “It’s so peaceful here.”

Edmund thought for a second. “It’s the Wood between the Worlds, I think. Remember, after we dug the Rings up we decided to test them to make sure they still worked.”

“Right, and the Professor said the Wood is the sort of place where nothing ever happens, so that’s why it seems so strange to think that we just got here.” Peter wandered over to one of the trees and ran his hand along the bark. “It’s so beautiful here.”

“Um, Peter, aren’t you forgetting something?”

Peter turned. “I can’t think of anything, but this place is so calm one could forget a great many things. What is it?”

“We need to mark the pool we came out of,” Edmund pointed out with practicality.

“Right,” Peter said. He walked back to the pool and knelt down at the side. “How shall we mark it?”

“I believe cutting a strip out of the turf is traditional,” Edmund said, “but perhaps we’d better cut more than one in a pattern so that it can be distinguished from any other pools that might have been marked in the past.”

Peter pulled out his pocket knife, then hesitated. “I don’t think we’re alone,” he murmured. “I just saw something move.”

“Are you sure?” Edmund hadn’t noticed anything, but he glanced in the direction Peter was indicating. To his surprise, there was a man standing next to one of the nearby trees. Edmund may not have been the warrior he had been in Narnia, but he was pretty sure his senses were good enough that he should have noticed the man sooner. Either this place was having more of a distracting effect on him than he’d realized, or the man was very good at moving quietly. Or both. Edmund stood up slowly, locking eyes with the man, who still hadn’t spoken. “Hello there!” Edmund called.

“Are you another dream?” the man responded. “I’ve never seen strangers here before.”

“I don’t think we’re part of a dream,” Edmund said. “This place really exists, and we do too.”

“It can’t be real, because someone I know to be dead is here as well,” the man said. “Come to think of it, I may be dead too. The last thing I remember is my plane going down. I didn’t picture heaven looking quite like this though.”

“We came here through regular old magic,” Edmund said. “Are you sure you didn’t run into something magical on your plane?”

“Good point,” he said. “There was some sort of energy source called the Tesseract. I didn’t touch it or anything, but it could have—except, no, because Bucky’s here and he hasn’t been around the Tesseract.”

“I think introductions would be in order at some point,” Peter broke in. “I’m Peter, and this is my brother Edmund.”

“Steve,” the man introduced himself, offering a hand to shake. “I just woke up here one day, on the grass. How did you get here?”

“Through the pool, with some Rings a friend of ours got from a magician a long time ago. Are you sure you didn’t start out in a pool and just forget that you moved to the grass?”

“No, I was in the middle of a clearing with no pools anywhere nearby. I’ll show you.” Steve led the way through the wood for a few miles. As they walked, the pools started to be spaced farther and farther apart until suddenly they entered a large glade that was all grass, with no water in it at all. The glade was almost featureless, with no stones or anything to mar the expanse of green. It was ringed with trees in an almost perfect circle. And leaning against one of the trees, almost the only thing they could see that was not green, was the huddled form of a sleeping man.

“Is that the Bucky you mentioned?” Edmund asked.

“Yes,” Steve said. His eyes fell. “He died almost a year before I—well, before whatever happened that I ended up here. He fell from a train.”

“And has he been here the whole time you have?”

“No, he comes and goes. Sometimes we reminisce about old times, sometimes he doesn’t talk to me at all.” As Steve talked, they walked over to join his friend. “I never see where he goes; he walks off through the woods and then I can’t find him. Maybe he’s not leaving, maybe he’s just hiding really well.” Steve sighed in frustration. “I don’t know why I’m even trying to make sense of all this. Dreams aren’t supposed to make sense.”

“Except this isn’t a dream,” Peter said firmly.

“What year was it when you came here, and where were you?” Edmund broke in.

“1945, over the Pacific Ocean,” Steve said. “What about you?”

“1949, in England.”

“I must have been here four years, then,” Steve said. “It feels longer, though.”

“Perhaps it is,” said Peter, thinking. “A different sort of magic brought you here than we used, so it could be a different time where you come from than where we do,.”

“It’s 1959,” Bucky said. Awake now, he stood up from the edge of the glade and joined the other three where they stood nearby.

“That’s not possible,” Steve said. “It’s still 1945 out there—or 1949, I suppose—and it just seems longer because we’re dreaming. Well, I’m dreaming. The rest of you don’t actually exist.”

“It’s not a dream, it’s the ice,” Bucky said.

“What ice?” Edmund asked.

“When they freeze you, you wake up here,” he said. He backed away from them. “I have to go.” He walked off through the wood. 

They all stood watching until he disappeared from view, then all three seemed to simultaneously realize they should be following. They ran towards where Bucky had disappeared, but even though he had only a few seconds’ head start, there was no sign of him.

“I told you, sometimes he just disappears,” Steve said.

“Do you have any idea what he meant about ice and freezing?” Edmund asked.

“No idea,” Steve said. “It sounded like he was trying to tell me how I got here, but I’ve never been frozen. We got terribly cold many times during the war, but our unit was lucky and none of us ever had frostbite.”

“It’s definitely a puzzle,” Edmund agreed. “And it doesn’t help that we don’t really know how any of this magic works. I mean, you’re here from a different time than we are, and I don’t think time necessarily has much meaning here in the Wood.”

“If you don’t know how magic works, how were able to travel here?” Steve asked. “And why?”

“That’s a long story,” Peter said. “And we don’t have time to tell it. We need to get home, now that we’ve tested the Rings.”

“Would you like to join us?” Edmund asked. “You’ll only have lost a few years if you come with us to 1949.”

Steve considered their offer in silence for some time, but eventually he shook his head. “If this is a dream, then there’s nothing gained by my accompanying you. But if it’s not, I might damage whatever magic or science brought me here if I go to a time where I don’t belong. It seems likely that the magic that brought me here is different from the magic that brought you.”

“Then farewell, and good luck to you,” Peter said. They shook hands with him and walked away.

“And besides,” Steve added more softly, as Peter and Edmund stepped into their pool, “I need to be here, in case my friend comes back.”

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~(After figuring out a way to make the timeline of this story work with both canons, I realized that caused it to involve a character & a characterization you’d indicated weren’t your favorite in your letter. I decided not to throw the story out since I didn’t have time to write anything else, and I hope you’ll still be able to enjoy most of it, but if that’s not possible then I do apologize.)~~ Turns out I needn't have worried!


End file.
